Kate White

Kate White serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, with cross-appointment in Quantitative and Computational Biology. Affiliated with the Bridge Institute, she pioneers experimental and computational tools to bridge structural biology and physiology through multi-scale approaches spanning atomic to cellular resolutions.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Pharmacology, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (2014)

Research Focus: Her laboratory investigates insulin hormone processing and maturation mechanisms in pancreatic β-cells, employing chemical biology, multi-modal imaging, biophysics, and computational modeling to study peptide hormone secretion. Defects in these processes underlie mental disorders (depression, bipolar) and metabolic diseases (diabetes). Current work defines signaling pathways for hormone maturation, examines inter-organelle communication, characterizes cellular subtypes, and develops community-based modeling tools.

Publication Trends: Recent work (2022-2024) demonstrates heavy reliance on soft X-ray tomography and cryo-electron tomography for cellular mapping, combined with dielectrophoresis separation techniques and computational modeling. Key themes include insulin vesicle maturation, beta cell structural heterogeneity during pregnancy, and organelle interaction quantification.

Laboratory Structure: The Kate White Lab operates through four integrated research thrusts: (1) signaling pathway characterization for peptide maturation, (2) inter-organelle communication biochemistry, (3) cellular/organelle subtype analysis in secretory cells, and (4) development of next-generation cellular modeling infrastructure for scientific communities.